Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review

The art is so good on this comic right now that I actually have a problem with the lettering for a change, because the text boxes look too big and bulky for the panel art. The drawback to having McNiven work on a comic that comes out three times a week is that heâ€™s going away for the next arc, as the story is taken over by Guggenheim and Larocca. What this will mean for the comic is anyoneâ€™s guess. Will they continue all of Dan Slottâ€™s sub-plots, or will those go away and be picked back up when Slott returns? Are the plots and sub-plots being arranged and coordinated by the editorial staff?

The reason for all of these questions is Slottâ€™s excellent writing. The atmosphere that he has created in only three issues has been very successful. Trying to start over with the horrible reset that Marvel imposed upon Peter Parker was a tall order, but Slott almost manages to make you forget about it by the time heâ€™s done. He also understands pacing, and manages to include the new character Carlie, the Spidey-mugger, the Jameson heart attack, AND the attempted takeover of the Bugle, all interspersed between elements of the main storyline. By canceling the other titles but giving us the same number of Spidey stories each month, Marvel has created a situation where different creative teams will be giving a slightly different voice and feel to Spider-Man each month. Did we really need it at this stage? Is this the proper format for them to adopt? Only time will tell.

One minor thing happened in the story that grated on my nerves, simply because it seemed so blatantly politically correct, and I am tired of all the PC stuff being jammed down my throat when Iâ€˜m picking up a comic to get away from it. Spidey tags a cab to help him follow the bad guys, in a city that hates and fears him, and for the past couple of issues has featured a ton of white men and women all calling for a spider head on a platter. The one guy who helps Spidey out happens to be a Muslim cab driver. Am I supposed to be offended by the stereotype of a foreign cab driver, or praise him for the attempt at realism? It feels all too artificial for everybody to hate Spidey, and the one nationality that has gained the most â€œtensionâ€ in American society in the last few years is the only one that gives Spidey a break. Hey, hereâ€™s an idea: how about somebody give me a break? Other than that, it has been a good writing spree for Dan Slott, and it feels wrong to have him go away so soon after doing such a great repair job to set the tone for Spider-Man.

Iron Man 25

by Daniel & Charles Knauf, and Roberto de la Torre

The writing has kicked up a notch on this title, as the Mandarin does a very good job of painting Maya into a corner in an attempt to make her unwittingly give him the doomsday weapon he has been trying to manufacture, while Doc Samson gives Tony a pretty cool psychological reason for Tonyâ€™s recent hallucination episodes. The one problem is, in order to move the story along, Tony has to make all of his inspirational breakthroughs in a split second, meaning he realizes automatically that Maya is alive without any further evidence, and he puts together in three seconds who the Mandarin is as if it would be obvious to anybody, when it has eluded Tony himself for quite a while. It reads like a movie that has been taking too long, and they need some way to pick up the pace. So weâ€™re not at top-notch writing yet, but weâ€™re heading in the right direction.

The Mandarin reveals his ultimate game plan, which is a Watchman-esque self-sacrifice play to allegedly improve all of mankind as a species. Iron Man busts in after the explanation has been given, so of course he thinks he knows everything, but has no clue what the Mandarinâ€™s intentions really are. Not that it would really matter to Tony, he has become more arrogant than ever before. It feels like the next issue might be the end of this particular story arc, which is weird, because itâ€™s finally getting better, but after too long of not enough happening.

X-Men 207

by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo

The end is here! Literally. The writing falls apart a little bit, as Cyclops changes his mind so much it will make you dizzy. After spending all his time trying to protect the New x-Men, he suddenly throws them right in the middle, assuming sinister didnâ€™t have massive files on all of them already, and that the Marauders and company wouldnâ€™t know who they were or have an idea of how to handle fighting them. It makes sense only if you donâ€™t stop to think about it.

Mystiqueâ€™s plan to save Rogue has worked, but Rogue makes a very strange decision on how to take Mystique out of play permanently, and absorbs her personality. This should be great for Gambit, since Mystique has tried to go after him romantically at least once. Now Rogue has two personalities in her that have the hots for the Cajun!

Predator X poses little challenge over all, because even though it can heal, evidently is cannot heal from the inside out?!? Again, not much sense there. Bishop is still mental and tries to take out a baby (!), just as Cyclops has granted Cable permission to run off with it. This is after Cyclops spent the whole time trying to take Cable out, or stop him and take the baby for himself. Cable fades and Bishopâ€™s weapon, which appears to be a simply gun, of all things, blows apart Charles Xavier. Cyclops takes Bishop out with an optic blast, which makes little sense, since Bishop can absorb at least part of that and use it for energy, so thereâ€™s another stupid move by the fearless leader.

Bishop disappears and nobody pays any attention to him as they all gather around Professor X. Donâ€™t worry, heâ€™s not really dead. Neither is Mr. Sinister, most likely. Weâ€™ve all been playing this comic game too long to fall for that nonsense again. The bottom line is that this is only a fair-to-middling resolution to what could have been a much better story, if only they had pulled out all the stops. Instead we get average art from Chris Bachalo, who shows no signs of growth as an artist, and a few questionable story elements. This is all a setup for what comes next, as the X-Men disassemble, and Wolverine gets yet another comic book to star in, X-Force, because we all know, we donâ€™t get enough appearances of Logan as it isâ€¦

X-Men: First Class 8

by Jeff Parker and Eric Nguyen

I seem to recall that Cyclops has already had a run-in with the Man-Thing before, only it happened later on, just after Phoenix died. This meeting in First Class throws a bit of a wrench into continuity, unless we just pretend that Scott didnâ€™t remember the creature when he encounters him years later. Nobody is paying that much attention to continuity regarding this series anyway, so maybe we should just consider it a What If title.

The X-team gets a little foreshadowing of future storylines, as they encounter possible alternate futures for each person, until they put everything to right again. An average story, but if you pick up this title, itâ€™s good for reading if youâ€™re the type of person who likes stand-alone stories. The linkage to each new issue will not really be solid enough to lend itself to two-pat stories, so you donâ€™t have to feel bad or that youâ€™re missing the overall story if you happen to miss an issue or two. You can just pick up a copy of this any time and read just it. Itâ€™s a relief in a mutant-saturated market that is trying to tie everything in right now, but both those and this still manage to mess up continuity.
_____________________________________________________________________

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

- Predator X eating Bishop's right arm. This is important because it sets Bishop up to be a mirror opposite of Cable (Bishop gets a mechanical arm). Now Bisjop's crazed mission is to follow Cable trhough time to get to the baby.

- The baby may or may not be Phoenix (Jean Grey) reborn. This parrallels Cyclops sending Cable to the future with Askani (which was forshadowed earlier in the crossover) to save him.

- Xavier's body dissappears from one panel to the next. Who took it and why?

-- Posted by: Josh at January 28, 2008 9:38 AM

Those are all good plot points for what is to come, Josh. It seems a shame to reduce Bishop to a crazed stalker, but that kind of diminishment can happen to good characters over time when new writers do not have a good idea how to develop them further. Did someone take Prof. X? I thought it ended with all of them gathered around his body...

-- Posted by: tpull at January 28, 2008 8:45 PM

Xavier's body dissappearing is very subtle. If I remember correctly, there are two panels on one of last pages. One panel with the X-Men standing over his body and the second showing the same scene except Xavier's body is not there. The next page is just black.

The body's dissapperance sets up X-Men: Legacy which deals with Xavier.

Bishop being a crazed stalker. I'm not exactly happy with this development, but it's slightly based in his first appearances. The dude traveled through time to kill a criminal at all costs, even his partners' lives.

What irks me about Bishop's pursuit of the child, is how can he truely know that this child is the one that could create his timeline? If he knew about her birth, then wouldn't it reason that he would have known about the Decimation and other events? I find it hard to believe that enough history was lost so that Bishop did not know about the Decimation, but knew who the baby would end up being. Bishop time traveled once, whatever he knows about the future/his past is set in stone for him.

I can accept that Cable, who travels through time on an almost regular basis would be able to pinpoint the child's birth but miss other events.

-- Posted by: Josh at January 29, 2008 10:23 AM

You just highlighted one of the major problems with the treatment of Bishop over the last ten years. Bishop was not the biggest person on trying to say, "I can't tell you about the future. You might change things." Out of all of the potential stories to tell, one filled with the most possibilities was to continually revisit Bishop during major events and consult with him, or at the very least give the reader an insight into how current events shaped up compared to knowledge of his own future timeline. These possibilities or concerns were handily dismissed with cavalier comments every time someone else brought them up. If I knew Bishop, I;'d be pulsing him every time something big happened to get a sense of his perception of events.

-- Posted by: tpull at January 29, 2008 7:57 PM

It was always my impression that after Bishop saved the X-Men from the "traitor" during Onslaught, his timeline became a divergent (sp?), alternate reality timeline ala Days of Future Past. So anything he would have known about his history/the future would be unreliable or irelevent at best.